1) Can we expect singularity to shape itself as the human race cultivates it or will we still hold charge of our technological creations?

I hope anyone, esp. R.K. can answer this question. This is something I’d like to expand my knowledge on. Thanks!

1) Can we expect singularity to shape itself as the human race cultivates it or will we still hold charge of our technological creations?

I hope anyone, esp. R.K. can answer this question. This is something I’d like to expand my knowledge on. Thanks!

To follow up on Corey’s comment, it seems to me that we still haven’t managed to come up with a compelling definition of “what is intelligence” in the first place. And, how does “intelligence” differ from “consciousness”, “self”, “awareness”, etc. (seems to me these are all different things, and understanding one doesn’t guarantee we automatically understand the others – I don’t think we even have a “self” so much as we have an impression of being a self that is fundamentally an illusion, so we can’t understand that until we solve the philosophical problem first or at least concurrently).

Furthermore, how do these things emerge in the brain? We have made good progress in understanding the “device drivers” of the brain, but when it comes to understanding the nature and origin of the core of cognition (how can you build a self-aware, conscious, intelligent neural network), no matter how much progress we’ve made in knowledge engines and so forth, I don’t see that we are really any closer to the answers to these questions than we were 50 years ago. (It seems to me that mere *magnitude* of complexity of a computational network is not enough to get to these results, but rather that it must be certain *kinds* of complexity that yield these things – i.e., certain specific types of network structures.)

There was a group of folks several years ago who called themselves the “Extropians” who imagined “downloading” their brains into artificial cognitive devices and achieving immortality. Even if we could understand how knowledge is encoded in our synaptic networks (again, we seem barely closer to that than 50 years ago, maybe some minor and tentative initial steps), there is no guarantee we could capture that in exact detail to load into an artificial system, and even if we could there is the philosophical problem of the continuity of consciousness (we could create a “cognitive clone” of ourselves, but we’d not necessarily have any continuity of experience that attaches our “self” to that entity any more than we’d identify with a toaster – kind of like the personal identity problem of the imaginary Star Trek “transporter” – is that really “me” or just a copy of me that thinks it’s me? – then again, does this happen in some sense every time we take a nap?).

Does Kurzweil think we are simply about to build a “race of intelligent machines that will take over the world”? (And hopefully they would have the interests of humans as a high priority?)

So I have two basic questions:

(1) How much of this is really well-defined right now? (I suspect there is a lot still not understood.)

(2) What should we be *doing* about all this? (Follows up on Jon’s comment above, after we figure out what we *can* do about it, and Paul’s comment about ethics.)

To follow up on Corey’s comment, it seems to me that we still haven’t managed to come up with a compelling definition of “what is intelligence” in the first place. And, how does “intelligence” differ from “consciousness”, “self”, “awareness”, etc. (seems to me these are all different things, and understanding one doesn’t guarantee we automatically understand the others – I don’t think we even have a “self” so much as we have an impression of being a self that is fundamentally an illusion, so we can’t understand that until we solve the philosophical problem first or at least concurrently).

Furthermore, how do these things emerge in the brain? We have made good progress in understanding the “device drivers” of the brain, but when it comes to understanding the nature and origin of the core of cognition (how can you build a self-aware, conscious, intelligent neural network), no matter how much progress we’ve made in knowledge engines and so forth, I don’t see that we are really any closer to the answers to these questions than we were 50 years ago. (It seems to me that mere *magnitude* of complexity of a computational network is not enough to get to these results, but rather that it must be certain *kinds* of complexity that yield these things – i.e., certain specific types of network structures.)

There was a group of folks several years ago who called themselves the “Extropians” who imagined “downloading” their brains into artificial cognitive devices and achieving immortality. Even if we could understand how knowledge is encoded in our synaptic networks (again, we seem barely closer to that than 50 years ago, maybe some minor and tentative initial steps), there is no guarantee we could capture that in exact detail to load into an artificial system, and even if we could there is the philosophical problem of the continuity of consciousness (we could create a “cognitive clone” of ourselves, but we’d not necessarily have any continuity of experience that attaches our “self” to that entity any more than we’d identify with a toaster – kind of like the personal identity problem of the imaginary Star Trek “transporter” – is that really “me” or just a copy of me that thinks it’s me? – then again, does this happen in some sense every time we take a nap?).

Does Kurzweil think we are simply about to build a “race of intelligent machines that will take over the world”? (And hopefully they would have the interests of humans as a high priority?)

So I have two basic questions:

(1) How much of this is really well-defined right now? (I suspect there is a lot still not understood.)

(2) What should we be *doing* about all this? (Follows up on Jon’s comment above, after we figure out what we *can* do about it, and Paul’s comment about ethics.)

Thank you in advance,
Jonathan

Thank you in advance,
Jonathan